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Babic was here!

Creative adventure of painter from Novi Sad, Danijel Babic has started in the last decade of the twentieth century. He belongs to the generation of Vojvodinian and Serbian fine artists that managed to retain the dignity and significance of the picture in the critical ninentines of the last century and the beginning of this century. The crisis of the epoch drove Babic and his peers to mature quickly at the very beginning of their artistic work – this young artist has very early created his specific expression. Thanks to his subtle feelings for the impulses of life and the world of art, Babic, in his response, created pictures in which different experiences of the modern fine art, comic strip, graphite, modern design, even caricature were summarized. At the same time this artist has succeeded to express his own personality in a clear and positive manner.
The picture of Daniel Babic is realized by rationalistic constitution. Linear clearness and homogenous fields of paint are means and method to sublimate witty idea and submerge into the characteristic urbane atmosphere. Portraits, nudes, figurative compositions- whether transponed from everyday situation or »quoted« from the inventarium of modern iconography (frequently belonging to strip area) are always contemporarily determined. Such paintings have strong metaphoric tension in their motives. In the latest series the artist sees traffic signs, sign posts and billboards as superior and totally up to date symbols. Text is very often an integral part of the picture. The artist uses text to speculate his pictorial engagement (letterically and meaningfully). This impression is emphasized by discrete autobiographical remarks and signatures made by the artist over the paintings, similar to graphite or simulated designer procedure. So, sprayed text BABIC WAS HERE over the precisely, hyperrealistically painted city sign Novi Sad should be understood as witty remark, but even more as artist's confession about his presence in his own picture, as his effort to provide efficient and modern artistic testimony in the present world. Nevertheless, Babic's art holds authentic expressivity - it acts through autochthonous drawing and colour, precise fine art definitions, sovereign pictorial content, very characteristic and purely personal poetics.

Sava Stepanov